Cause, Effect, and Consequences

by Coltsguy


Polish Your Skills

"There is no way I'm a Mary Sue. That's stupid."

"Of course you think that. Given your unique circumstances it might look that way. It doesn't matter. You are one and you're just in typical genre blindness right now."

"How would I be the one with genre blindness?"

"Characters rarely see things about themselves that others can see easily. You've seen this enough times to know this regardless of yourself."

"How can you say that?"

"With ease."

"How can you be so nonchalant about this!?! This is my fucking life you're talking about!"

"When you've seen the things I've seen and lived lives the way I've lived you tend to become jaded rather easily and develop quirks or rules to govern your behavior. Your lucky that I'm one of the more understanding types or I wouldn't have even given you any explanations. I would have simply purged your story and any traces of your involvement in the six timelines you affected."

"I... thought I went to seven..." I finished lamely.

"You seemed to still have a pull towards your own original story despite the error that occurred. You see your story just so happened to be the last one you came from."

"You mean...?"

"That was the story you were supposed to arrive in. Due to some anomalous factor that I have yet to identify instead of ending up there you somehow became tied into the My Little Pony universe. What is worse is that it wasn't an echo universe like we can control, but instead it was the canon universe from which all variants stem from. You should have lived your entire life in the correct story and honestly it wouldn't have given me this issue I have to deal with. I had to take time away from managing the variants from Strike Witches to cover this."

"So I... should have ended up in Dragonball Z?"

"That's right. And furthermore the man in charge of Dragonball variants should have been the one to take care of this if that was the case. However, since you never arrived there permanently you were considered to be of origin in My Little Pony. Since there is no one in our group in charge of My Little Pony sub-designation Generation Four case management I was assigned... Which is right back where I started."

"Even if I started believing that I was a self insert how could you possibly believe I'm a Mary Sue type anyway? I don't fit right."

"Instantly connecting with characters. Characters acting outside of the norm. Changes in physical characteristics with minor detriment to yourself. Boosts in ability being handed to you. Social skills that are better than a bag of potatoes. Having characters fall in love with you with little effort. I have many different examples which I can give you to prove this. You are foolish to consider these large number of coincidences anything else than the sum of the traits of a Mary Sue. To deny it any further is to just delude yourself."

I wanted to. I wanted to deny him. I wanted to deny the situation. I wanted to so bad... but I couldn't. I couldn't because I saw that other version of me in that story. I had his memories. If I was a Mary Sue, then that would explain a lot of things. Hell, I didn't even have to look there. Rainbow Dash nearly giving me a drive through, so to speak, is sufficient enough. Hell the only evidence I needed was the side effect of my hypnotism; women desiring me sexually without rational thought.

"I'll take your silence as admission. We can move things along now. You have been classified as a Category I issue. That means that you have the potential to be a threat to any history you can enter. Of the three categories this one is the most dangerous. With your powers it is even more dangerous. It is, however, part of the reason that you aren't being erased immediately.

"There are many beings that can alter reality to their whims. They already have the necessary abilities to make themselves non-threats to the timelines so we simply keep an eye out for anything that might go wrong. However, not all of them come into being with that power. Some like you are created through a series of circumstances that allow you to do so. You do not have all the necessary abilities. At least not yet. Therefore under the Fair Test clause since you have several of the necessary characteristics and fall into a non-managed canon timeline you are given the option of undergoing a test to see if you can form those abilities and if so will be given a probationary license to manage cases that fall in this universe."

"So... I guess... what would that entail?"

"You would be sent to another monitored timeline. There I will assess your abilities and see whether or not you can perform the necessary task for you to be given a license. If not, then you will be erased along with your story."

"What do I have to do?"

"That would be telling. It is your test to see if you can figure that out on your own and perform the necessary ability. No hints will be given."

"That's bullshit," I said as bluntly as I could.

"It is what it is. The success rate is currently nine percent so I wouldn't give up hope just yet. The only question is where to send you."

"Could I at least go somewhere familiar?"

"...Very well," he agreed at length. “Anywhere in particular or should I acquiesce to any other of your demands for your test?”

“Eh, surprise me.”

Oh shit, he’s got the shit-eating grin in full effect. What was I thinking?

“As you wish,” he stated.

He waved his hand in front of himself in a wide arc while mouthing ‘good luck’ and then I felt my body lurch. Almost immediately after that I fell through some hole that just appeared below me. I didn’t fall for long though. Instead my momentum shifted and suddenly down was behind me rather than below me.

As quickly as it started my fall ended on my back. The sudden halt of my momentum was a bit startling and I quickly rolled over and brought myself up to a knee. What I saw around me was not something I recognized.

It was like a bombed-out wasteland. Grey and black were the only colors that seemed to permeate the stupidly hot area. It was like a fire had laid waste to everything, except it wasn't quite the right appearance. I say that because even the brick was like that. The worst part? It looked like this used to be a college.

"What kind of shit had to have happened here?" I mumbled to myself.

It was then when I heard the sound of gunfire ring out. Of course this made me think of a post-apocalyptic world that I had been sent to, but it also made me think that maybe this was what I was supposed to be tested on. I jogged, albeit reluctantly, towards the sound of the gunfire with the intent of doing something when I got there.

I managed to hear the gunfire coming from a large building that definitely got some cues from Greek architecture. Not a great deal, but enough that I got the vibe from it which is cool because I really dug Greek mythology. After finding some open glass doors I carefully went inside. The doors led into a large lobby with a couple of staircases on either side. Not really wanting to climb up some long staircase I cautiously entered a door next to the staircase on the right. I was sure I was still on the right track as more gunfire erupted from up ahead. There was some shouting as well now, but I couldn't make it out.

I continued walking down the hallway until I reached a blown out doorway. I carefully pressed myself against the wall next to it and looked through it to see a vast courtyard area. It didn't seem nearly as wrecked as it did outside, but in this area there were several people just firing upon one another in a shootout. They all had decent enough cover so all they were doing was just a lot of nothing but posturing. At least that was what it seemed until they stopped and I noticed the first familiar sight since arriving.

Lucien and Twilight. What the hell were the odds on- Yeah, I couldn't even finished that thought with a straight face. I wasn't sure why they were all facing off with him now, but I was beginning to wonder why no magic was being used. At least I was until I noticed one of the people chatting with him had this jar on his belt. I had no idea what was going on, but the damn thing was creeping me out. Like, vampire with hungry eyes type creeping me out. That being the case I did what I felt was the right thing and snapped my fingers, rendering the jar into tiny fragments of it's former self.

It turned out to be the wrong idea. As soon as the jar was wrecked, Lucien sprang into action. Not the good kind either. He proceeded in quick order to slam his green coated fist into the ground and create spires that impaled all the people there.

What was that? That wasn't Lucien's m.o. Well, kind of, but still...

“Dude what the fuck man?!”

"And you! Don't think I don't recognize you for who you are!" Lucien shouted while rounding on me, his bloodlust not fading in the slightest. "I caught a whiff of you and your magic when you first showed up in Equestria, and you just reek of Discord; someone I'm not on the best terms with right now!"

He marched up to me and aggressively got into my face. His eyes were getting pretty bloodshot to boot.

"I'm not gonna pretend to know why you decided it would be a good idea to give a complete stranger a chaos-infused chunk of adamantium, not to mention why you were there that day anyway, but I do know one thing!" He sneered, inches from my face. "That was the day I met him. And if you have any connection to that pony at all, I suggest you hold still and make my job easy."

There was an eerie quiet after Lucien finished speaking, the only sound being Twilight's soft sobbing in the distance. Not cool man. The air was dead around us, no breeze to cool down the heated confrontation. Lucien's menacing stance was highlighted by the dark silhouettes of the mages impaled on spears of earth just in the background. Something I still was having issues dealing with.

“Look man, I ain’t that guy. I know him. I had beef with him. I dealt with it. That doesn’t mean you should be taking it out on me.”

It didn’t look like that was the answer he was looking for though.

“I’m not ‘taking it out on you’, I’m trying to erase him and any trace of his actions in my life. So I’ll ask you now, what do you mean that you know him?”

“It’s… complicated, but ultimately irrelevant to what you’re after and what I’m needing to do here. Most likely anyway.”

His expression told me that he didn’t believe me.

“Then what do you need to do here? Because I need to go, and I don’t want you in my way. You need to learn not to meddle in the affairs of others.”

I knew he wasn’t going to like what I said next, but since nothing had happened here that I would consider even close to what I needed to, in my own mind, pass the test given to me I had no choice but to continue on.

“Well, I might end up in your way because there is something I have to do here that most likely requires me to follow you for who knows how long until I figure it out. Though just seeing you casually kill random people isn’t giving me the best vote of confidence in your state of mind right now.”

Man, that just rolled out of me naturally. I didn’t want to fight him, but I couldn’t stop running my mouth to him. Was I just playing off of the atmosphere or something?

“I’d call that a justification if I ever heard one,” he said definitively as he reached a hand up and grasped his sword. In one swift movement, he drew it and slashed it towards me. In a thoughtless move I instantly teleported a couple dozen feet back as he swung through nothing but air.

“I thought you were gonna make this easy!” he shouted as his sword morphed into a matching set of blue-tinted chakrams. Not missing a beat, he hurled them through the air at me.

I brought my hand up and formed a blue half-dome shield to intercept, but to my chagrin as they were on the side of Harmony they sheared right through them causing me to duck them instead.

In a flash of blue, the weapons appeared back in his hands. They morphed back into a sword, then a hammer of a familiar red tint. He charged at me, readying a strike.

I flinched for a moment before realizing that if his chakrams were on the side of Harmony then his big ass hammer would be of the stuff that I gave him instead. I simply motioned to the side and watched as the hammer went flying a ways away. Since he still had a grip for a second he followed a bit with it, hitting the ground on his side.

“Not the best idea since I helped you make that sucker. You calming down yet?”

He looked up at me with rage in his eyes. Maybe taunting him wasn’t the best idea. He rolled to his feet quickly, fiery energy coalescing on his hands. After a moment, flaming green magic claws formed from in between the knuckles on his fist. Heh, that was pretty cool looking. It was kinda like Wolverine’s but made of fiery pain. In the blink of an eye, he lunged at me once again, claws thrusting right towards my midsection.

I didn’t have much time to think about a counterattack so I simply teleported again. This time off to his left side and behind him. I was not really looking to fight him so instead I brought my invisibility up to keep him from attacking me again so soon.

He looked around for a moment, his face twisted into a snarl of anger. After a few seconds of searching, he relaxed his pose slightly. I had hoped that he was calming down, but his next words dashed that hope.

“Don’t think you’re gonna be able to hide from me,” he said, closing his eyes. Almost immediately, he snapped his head to look right at me, despite his closed eyes. With a quick shout, he leapt at me again, this time aiming for my head.

In response I started to back up. I had really hoped I could buy a little time with my invisibility, but that too was of no help. In lieu of that I formed a couple of illusionary copies of myself that charged him from the sides. That barely bought me a second as he dealt with them effortlessly. I couldn’t stay close to him because I was in no way an up close fighter. Therefore I teleported away again to an even farther distance. This time I formed a multitude of copies scattered all over the area, hoping that it would force him to deal with them before turning his attention once more to myself.

“I still see you!” he yelled while he slammed his palm against the earth, cracking the ground around him. In an instant, all my clones were impaled by chunks of rock, just like the guys from before. I heard the ground below me rumble as well, so I teleported again to an area already affected by the spires as it seemed to just wash over the area instead of just being directed all at once.

“This is getting stupider by the second,” I mumbled to myself. “I need to come up with something to stop him or I’m going to get Wile’d.”

The magic claws over his fists faded out, and he ran over to one of the spires of rock. His foot lashed out against it, separating cleanly at the base. The now-separated earth lit up in a green flame, the same color as the claws were. He made a throwing motion with his arms, and the chunk followed suit, rocketing at me.

Again, I teleported out of the way as it was the only effective means of dodging at my disposal. I was going to get concerned that he could figure out where I would go, but since he was still angry for no reason I hoped I had a little time before he sobered up, so to speak, and started thinking about it. With nothing else coming to mind, though, I simply had to start stepping into the territory I was supposed to represent. Therefore, I simply charged up a little magic and snapped my fingers.

What was not in my plan, if you could even call that a plan, was that all manner of creatures just popped into existence from the Mushroom Kingdom. Pirahna plants, goombas, koopas, you name it they just showed up looking straight at Lucien.

He sighed. “Chaos magic is such bullshit.”

“You’re goddamned right,” I said in my best Heisenberg voice.

I watched as the summoned mob all started to rush him, causing him to go into an impromptu gauntlet of hammers, mushrooms, and fireballs. He improvised platforms made of earth to jump and climb his way through the mess of virtual creatures, but it was clear that it was gonna take him some time. For some reason, he must’ve forgotten that he could probably clear it all out with a well-timed blast. Or a giant foot stomp to their heads might’ve worked too.

I teleported a bit farther back as he started working his magic on the horde of video game enemies. Something had to have changed him to make him get really super aggressive since I last read the story. I could ask Twilight, but this is probably what my test was supposed to entail. At this point it would make sense. If I had more experience in fighting I bet I could win this with near ease. No, that’s just assuming things. Let’s go over this scenario.

He’s good at close range. He can sense me even when I’m invisible. He can deal with my illusions. I bet he could dodge my magical blasts without much effort. I paused briefly to summon more goombas before thinking some more. This was a bit of a brain teaser. I obviously couldn’t kill him. He’s the main character. I doubt I could pop over to Dragonball and pick those up to fix him-

Ohshithe’srightinmyface!!!

I teleported once again, but this time was much closer as there was a slight cut in my shoulder where his sword would have come down on me. It was not really bleeding too much, but fuck did that hurt. Why the hell did it hurt? I thought I was near indestructible from what I could tell. When all else fails, blame magical bullshit. Not the best time to be thinking on that.

Yep, he was almost back on me again. Another teleport away and this time I charged up for a different summon. A snap of my fingers later and this time he was dealing with a ridiculous looking horde of giant rabbits. You heard me right. Giant rabbits motherfucker. Check ‘Night of the Lepus’ if you want to see what that can do.

“Can you not?” was all he had to say before switching into his hammer and going to town on them.

With him distracted once more I thought about the problem at hand again. The biggest issue I had was that he was just going to keep coming at me as long as he knew where I was. He was more than a match for anything of the level that I would use against him. It wasn’t like I was going to unleash the Flood on him or anything. I couldn’t do that. Therefore I would need to get off his radar and try to sneak up on him. A harder task than I might have thought from where this began. He could sense me even while invisible. Just like Sandcroft could. Maybe it was a thing here? No, not the time to worry about that. He was more than halfway through them already. Maybe if I concentrate on my invisibility even more. It was the spell I was most in tune with. Perhaps…

I concentrated even more on being invisible. Not just from sight, but from all senses. Smell, taste, touch, hearing, even from the sixth sense that everyone seemed to have in some form. Every sense imaginable or even not imaginable. I was undetectable. Untraceable. I was...

Gone.

And Lucien realized it immediately. His posture changed while fighting, his back and shoulders stiffening up suddenly. He finished off the bunny whose face he was hammering to a pulp, then teleported away suddenly. I saw him reappear on a nearby roof, looking around the area. I took a hesitant step back and saw that he just couldn’t figure out where I was. I looked down and even there I noticed that I left no footprint in the ground where I had been. Lucien seemed to give up in a way, jumping back into the middle of what was left of the giant rabbit horde to finish them off.

I looked around for a moment to locate Twilight and found her hiding behind a statue nearby. I risked a teleport over to her and checked to see if that did anything to alert Lucien. He was still taking care of the last four of them in a flourish so I assumed not. I looked back to Twilight and noticed how… almost sad she looked. I wasn’t sure I could do anything for Lucien at the moment, but maybe Twilight was a different matter.

“I think you’re the only one who can take care of him at this juncture.”

She jumped slightly looking around for me, but failing to do so. I guess I was glad that what I was doing was still working since I bet she could have pinpointed me with her hearing normally.

“Whatever he’s going through you’re the only one around with any hold on him I bet so I guess it’s up to you.”

I reached down and gave her a poke on the horn, giving her a little spark of power.

“In case you need it.”

“Who are-”

That was all I got to hear before I was pulled away like a gunshot from there and back into a weird starry sky area with some kind of fog around me. Wait a second. Was this the starry hallway from the season three finale? What the fuck?

As I tried to figure out why, something started to coalesce in my field of vision. It didn't take long for me to figure it out. 'It' being the unblurring form of Celestia. I, not being that gullible, knew that this wasn't Celestia. They, however, didn't seem to care one bit.

"Congratulations Twilight. I knew you could do it."

"...Seriously?" I asked as I proceeded to give them a look so flat that it could be used as a level for construction purposes.

"Not apropos enough for you? I thought this form would be quite appropriate for the situation. You see, you've managed to fall into the proper formula for passing your test. I know I'd be happy if I were you," he finished with a smirk.

"Ecstatic," I stated flatly.

"Honestly, do someone a favor and they always seem to think it's the worst thing that could happen to you. This is why we always get a bad reputation. I suppose there's nothing to do but continue with your initiation."

"Initiation? You mean into your little group?"

"What else would I mean?" she said as she lifted herself off of the ground with her body beginning to glow. "Do you agree to our terms and conditions?"

"That sounds horrible to anyone who knows what an End User License Agreement is! I don't have a choice right now though do I?"

"Of course you do. You know what they are."

"Fuck it. Fine. I agree."

"Splendid!" she shouted as her horn lit up. "Then welcome! Welcome to the Resplendent Order of Beatific Sentients!"

I barely had time to realize what she had said and yell something before a wide beam of light erupted from her horn and engulfed me.

"OH YOU GIGANTIC AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!"